When I looked at you for the first time I felt my heart walk into my minds bedroom and ask for a sleep over. I knew it was you. You looked at me with those ocean blue eyes and said Yes. How does it happen? How do we look at someone we’ve never seen in this lifetime and feel the universe pulse through our nervous system?
I got the title of this blog post “Truth is like Poetry” from the film The Big Short. That’s the first part of the quote, the second part is “And everybody hates Poetry.” I loved it as soon as I saw it because I love poetry and I love Truth and the truth is most people do hate poetry. Why do they hate poetry? Poetry is difficult, poetry takes work, poetry often requires multiple readings to understand what the hell the poet is trying to communicate. Poetry requires the melting of the heart and the mind. Poetry rewards with a deep inner smile and not the quick payoff that a ride in a Ferrari or a stay in a million dollar beach house or a VIP night out in Vegas gives. Like the pursuit of Truth, Poetry requires us to dip our minds feet into the deep end and get fully soaked. We need to struggle through the metaphors and the allegories and the play on words and the sometimes impossible vocabulary words to find the diamond that is hidden in plain sight. Who has the time in today’s world to slow down enough to wrestle with stupid words and ideas. “All that thinking takes too much energy, I want to get out of my head and just live man.” When the deepest Truth isn’t your top priority, you’re willing to take short cuts and cut corners. You want what’s behind the curtain but you’re not sure you know all the answers so you’ll call your friends dad that works for the show and see if he can get you the answers early.
When we’re living our truth and reading good poetry, we don’t have to hide and pretend. We don’t have to call our friends dad for the answer because we’re figuring it out on our own. If we find through serious study and deep searching that one of the answers is still call your friends dad, now it’s from the perspective of knowledge and power and not groveling and ass kissing. When we do our homework, we can defend our truth and there’s NO FEAR!! Even if it’s wrong, it’s okay because we studied for the test. When we don’t do the homework, we have no base of knowledge/power from which to negotiate with. We have to be at the beck and call of whomever it is we’re asking the answer from. “It’s so boring to read the extra chapter, to stay for the afterschool discussion, to complete the bonus activity. I just want to post the coolest picture of my new shoes, OMG they’re so awesome!!
Truth and poetry both require guts and courage and balls and brains and the ability to be vulnerable when necessary.
Good luck softening the heart.